


canto

by autiotalo (orphan_account)



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/autiotalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Till follows his bandmates' advice and goes on retreat to a monastery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	canto

The bells are tolling as I arrive: deep, swinging sounds of melancholy that gather in the air like storm clouds. I hope it is not an omen. Across the downward swathe of lawn that divides the car park from the monastery a jackdaw wanders aimlessly. It seems unconcerned both by my presence and by the bells that continue to ring. A monk hurries along a path at the bottom of the lawn, his black robes flurrying to make him seem close cousin to the jackdaw. Except, of course, jackdaws can't sing. Monks can.

This was Flake's idea. The others backed him up. With us, it always has to seem democratic, even if the idea is oligarchic or monarchic in origin. A holiday, Paul had said. Somewhere nice and relaxing, added Olli. In the country, Richard smiled: you like the country. Learn to sing, Flake said as I'd got up out of my seat and huffed at their insensitivity. Please, Schneider asked: please, Till, say you'll do it…

Outmanoeuvred by guilt and overwhelmed by their care, I agreed. Flake arranged it and sent me on my way with a set of directions and the instruction to 'have a good time'. As if one could have a good time in a monastery. I rebelled at the first petrol station I could find, stopping to stock up on several packets of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka.

Thus armed with my contraband, I'm rather disappointed that nobody frisks me or inspects my bag when I check into the monastery guesthouse.

My room overlooks the lawn. The jackdaw has been joined by a pair of woodpigeons that lumber around, pecking for food. The thick stone walls blunt some of the power of the bells. They've been ringing for over five minutes, and the sound goes right through me, winding my nerves tight.

On the table there's a note, asking me to meet the Precentor after Conventual Mass. I am quite welcome to attend the Office, it adds. I unpack by the simple expedient of tipping everything out of my bag onto the table on top of the note. Then I open the door of the en-suite so that the little extractor fan comes on, and I sit on the edge of the bed and smoke my first cigarette, slowly. The whirr of the fan helps to muffle the interminable ringing of the bells. It's only after I've stubbed out the cig in the sink that I notice the _No Smoking_ sign.

I wait for fifteen minutes before venturing outside, and there I take my first proper look at the monastery. It is utilitarian rather than beautiful: post-Reformation and carrying the weight of Lutheran chastisement. I light another cigarette and consider the long, three-storied wings that wrap around the church. The walls are whitewashed; the windows painted the same shade of red as the terracotta roof tiles. The church has two towers, which are sloped and jagged, grey rather than red. I can see the bells, now at rest, sleeping silent in their cradles.

I drop my cigarette and stamp on it, and then walk down the path and into the monastery.

*

I suppose that all institutions look the same: hospitals, prisons, Army barracks, boarding schools, monasteries. There's always a faint feeling of unease, or so it seems to me: a slight desperation, a counting of the passage of time: tick-tock, tick-tock. Inside, it reminds me of school. White tiles. White corridor. The light struggling through the plain glass windows on this, the south side of the building. A heavy hushed silence; the furtive desire to run yelling down the corridor just to see what would happen.

I'm too old to go running down corridors. I shuffle further inside and stand listening at the door to the shape of the Mass. The doors are thick, so I can't hear much: the occasional notes of song, Gregorian plainchant, and sometimes the rich, blowsy sound of the organ.

By the time the Office is over, I'm standing by a noticeboard, pretending to read leaflets that are of no interest to me at all. The church door opens and the monks stroll out. They leave their sombre attitudes at the threshold between church and cloister, taking off duty in the same way that they remove the long-tailed hoods to hang them on hooks along the corridor wall.

A few of the monks look at me. Some are curious, and some smile. None of them linger or come to speak to me. I feel even more like an outsider. At length, the monks leave the corridor and go on to whatever monkish duties they have to do. The door is still open, and so I look inside the church. The lights have been turned off, but there is a glow from behind the altar.

As I stare into the darkness, a figure emerges from the aisle. I step back hurriedly to give him the space to pass. He gives me a quick glance, blinking in the light of the corridor. "Mr Lindemann," he says. "I am Brother Precentor." He holds out his hand. I take it, and we look at one another.

The Precentor is a short, average-looking man with thick black spectacles that sit uneasily on the bridge of his nose. He has thin grey hair combed over from right to left, and his face is soft and pudgy. He resembles a vole, and the image makes me smirk inwardly. His voice is pitched at an almost uncomfortable level: high enough that one is forced to listen, but low enough for it not to be too irritating.

"Come with me," he says, without bothering with any pleasantries, and he turns and goes back into the church. I follow him.

Churches give me a vague feeling of anxiety. I don't mind them in terms of architecture, but in terms of religion they disturb me. Usually I try to avoid going into a church in a religious context. That was going to be difficult for the next few days.

Even in semi-darkness, the monastery church is a vast space. I had guessed at a Baroque interior, but instead it is plain and simple. The altar commands the crossing; I don't look up at the crucifix. On the north side sits the bishop's chair, and beside it there's a pedestal with an arrangement of flowers. Incense hangs sifting clouds through the crossing, and I wrinkle my nose to stop myself from sneezing.

We move along the aisle and into the monk's quire. This is the only place in the heavy, womblike darkness that is still lit. The Precentor sits down on one of the misericords and gazes at me for a while. I stand and wait. I'm not sure where to look. I examine the floor tiles. They are brownish-red with dark yellow squirms on them that writhe about to form a sort of pattern. I follow the pattern with my gaze and am not entirely surprised to see that it leads to the altar.

"So," says the Precentor suddenly, and I jerk my gaze back to him; "why are you here?"

I wonder if this is some sort of theological conundrum, and then realise that the question is a lot more mundane, and that it has a simple answer: "My friend told me to come."

His eyebrows lift. "Do you always do what your friends tell you to do?"

"Sometimes."

He nods. "Why did your friend tell you to come here?"

I scowl. "He says I should take singing lessons."

"But?"

"But nothing. I'm here, aren't I?" It comes out sounding snappish and rude. I am almost ashamed by my response, and so I try again: "Maybe he's right. Maybe I do need singing lessons."

"You never studied before, then."

The idea is laughable, but strangely I can't even raise a smile. "No."

The Precentor tilts his head. "Why do you sing?"

I hate these kinds of questions. "Because a friend told me that I should."

"Ah. The same friend?"

"No," I say, impatiently. "Another friend."

"So the impetus for you to sing did not come from within yourself."

"No." I give in and turn my head towards him. He looks like a black rat now, I decide: not a helpless little vole, but a big black Benedictine rat.

He nods his head again, as if I was merely confirming what he already knew. "Do you like to sing, Mr Lindemann?"

My knees sag. "I – Maybe. Sometimes. Yes. I don't know."

He waits for a more coherent answer. I struggle with it. Eventually I say, "I… like to sing when it has purpose."

"Song always has purpose," he fires back. "It cannot be otherwise."

I shake my head. "I sing in the bath. That has no purpose. Sometimes it's not even from conscious effort."

"It does have purpose," the Precentor insists. "But explain what you mean."

I think about it. "I don't like doing the sound-checks before a gig. I know it has a technical purpose, but I don't like it. I would rather avoid that and just get the show over with. It's all right when I'm on stage, though. Most of the time." I wince, remembering. "Okay, sometimes it's not all right. But if the others can do it, so can I; it's not real, after all. Just pretend: and I can pretend for a couple of hours a night. Performance is purpose, I suppose. People paying money to hear you sing is purpose."

The Precentor looks at me, but says nothing. I'd expected a dozen homilies by now, and the fact that he's said barely anything at all is making me nervous. Maybe I'm supposed to meditate on my own words and ask myself searching questions about my intent as a singer. I already know the answer. I've already told him. The only question on my mind is how soon I can get out of here. I badly need a smoke.

Still he is silent. I start to sweat. I don't know whether it's because I'm in a church, or because I think that I'll be asked to perform in a moment, or because I feel like I'm being judged. There's a deeper connection between those three states, but I don't want to think about it just now.

The Precentor stands up. The misericord creaks slowly back into place. The sound distracts me, and I look towards it, catching only the flow of black cloth as the monk walks around me, from back to front.

"Breathe," he instructs me, suddenly.

Startled, I obey.

He watches me, and then says, "You were a swimmer, I believe."

"Yes."

"You still breathe like one."

"I thought that was a good thing," I say, bemused.

"Only if you're going to sing underwater, Mr Lindemann."

He continues to circle around me as I absorb this comment. The rat has turned into a crow scavenging for carrion. I resist the urge to turn on my heels and spin around after him. He walks another circuit and then comes to a halt in front of me.

"Can you sight-read?"

I nod. That much I've learned.

He shuffles back to the misericords and takes up a book from the shelf. He comes back, flicking through the pages. Flattening the book in one hand, he holds it out.

"Here. Take it with you. Memorise it."

I stare down at the open pages, absorbing the notes that run, staccato-stolid, up and down their staves. Only when I have an inkling of how it will sound do I look at the words, which are in Latin and therefore have their own poetry, their own sense of rhythm that does not necessarily match that of the music. I am used to fitting my words to a music that exists before my songs come into being. This is different. The words come first, and the music is a strange animal that keeps pace alongside. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

"Well," says the Precentor. "We shall continue tomorrow, before Mass. Let us say eleven o'clock? Good. Until then."

I close the book around my index finger, which is now also my bookmark. I haven't said yes to anything, and yet he's taken my silence for agreement. I suppose that it must be a common assumption in monasteries. I have the vague idea that monks are obliged to do everything that is asked of them, as long as it is in God's Name. Maybe questions are always rhetorical. Obedience is one of the Rules of St Benedict, after all.

We shuffle out of the quire. The Precentor flicks off the lights as we go, and the church winks out into darkness, save for the single candle in the red holder that burns above the altar. I look back at it, and shiver.

The Precentor smiles at me before he abandons me at the church door. "By the way, Mr Lindemann, you are quite welcome to join us for mealtimes in the Refectory. We are not bound by a Rule of Silence. The atmosphere is quite convivial."

*

I take my meals in my room, alone.

*

The bells wake me at exactly five forty-five in the morning. I sit up too suddenly, reaching out to silence the alarm clock and then realising too late that it isn't the alarm clock at all. By that point I've already knocked it onto the floor, and it has tumbled further away than my hand can grope.

Blearily I emerge from the nest of blankets to peer out of the window. Across the empty stretch of lawn I can see the lights on in the corridor that leads to the church door. Through the plain glass I can see the monks assembling, turning back their long, deep sleeves and veiling their heads. It's almost like watching television, unreal and surreal and hyper-real all at the same time. The surrounding darkness brings the lull of false safety. My gaze becomes sharper, focused on spots of colour in the lit corridor. I can feel the weight of the dawn tearing at my vision, and so I blink; shake my head.

I am suddenly aware of the bells still ringing. I can hear different notes in the sound now: the great sonorous boom of the two larger bells and then, beneath them, a cadence of shorter notes that rise and fall. I have to listen closely to follow their sounds. I amuse myself – or rather, I tax myself – by attempting to pitch the note of the great bells. I think it is an F. I try to sing middle C aloud, and then count backwards. I know that Flake could do it easily, without having to run through scales. I don't have perfect pitch. I wonder if it would help if I did.

My breath mists the windowpane. I wipe it clear and hum a discordant variation on the pattern of sound made by the smaller bells. It returns, over and over, to that deep F. I watch the monks cluster together, and then the door opens and they file into church one by one.

The bells continue to toll. Bored, I let myself thud back onto the mattress and put a pillow over my face, bunching my fists tight against the sides of my head to block out all sound. After a minute or two, I start to feel as if I'm being suffocated. I hurl the pillow to the floor and take a breath. The air is silent again. It feels clean.

I go back to sleep.

*

The Conventual day is half over by the time I set foot in church. There is a sheet of paper in my room that details the time of all the Offices. Since my arrival, there have been eight of them. I've managed to miss every single one – a full monastic day's worth. I've slept through three, despite being woken in time for Matins. I am pleased with the idea that I would make an absolutely useless monk.

Brother Precentor is waiting for me in the crossing, at the foot of the altar steps. The lights are on in the church, and this time I can see into the chapels along the north side of the nave. It is very stark and white, and it unnerves me. I prefer the darkness of yesterday.

The light strikes from the Precentor's spectacles so that, as I approach, it seems as if he has no eyes: as if humanity has been burned out of him. When I get closer, he is forced to tilt back his head to look at me. My shadow falls over him and chases off the light, and I can see his expression clearly.

He's annoyed. "You did not attend Vespers," he says. "Nor Compline. Nor even Matins -"

I don't want to hear the whole list. "I didn't come here for the Papist stuff. I'm not very religious."

The Precentor recoils slightly. "You do not have to be religious to sit in a church and listen to song. You merely need to have an open mind."

Somehow, I know it would be useless for me to retort. Instead, I shrug.

"Well," says the Precentor, stepping back to leave me in the centre of the crossing. "Sing something for me."

For a brief moment my mind goes utterly blank. It reminds me all too vividly of that day a long time ago – how time passes when you think too much! - when Richard had convinced me to go into the studio and record a vocal track for him. Until I was stood in front of the microphone, with him gesturing at me to hurry up; sing something, anything, Till – please, just _sing_! – I hadn't realised just how important it had become to him. And then I was silenced not only by my own fear, but also by what he was asking of me.

I was drunk the first time I sang in a studio. Now I'm sober and in a church, and the anxiety is exactly the same. In a studio there's no audience. In a church there are rows and rows of empty pews. I realise suddenly that that's what's keeping me mute; perhaps that's why I don't like sound-checks. Too much empty space where an audience should be: an empty performance can only follow. What's the point in performing for yourself?

The Precentor waits patiently. Somewhere above me, the hands of a clock creep slowly around, counting down the moments before the next Office. I do not want to think about the passage of time.

I try to sing. I'd thought about this last night: what song would I choose? It's all very well singing one's own songs at a concert; but it feels rather pretentious, not to mention out of place, to sing one of them in a monastery. In any case, I'd made a mental shortlist of songs that I considered vaguely suitable, and so without too much more thought I begin 'Wilder Wein'.

Three lines in, my voice cracks. I feel it go; try to catch it and work around my mistake. Without the music, it sounds horrible. The high ceiling and the dome of the church throw my broken voice back at me. In echo, in distortion, I can hear just how bad it is. I persevere for another few lines, but it is too painful. I stop.

The Precentor waits until the echoes have died away, and then he says, his face and voice impassive, "Try again. Something else."

My face burns with non-specific shame. I aim for something mid-range, instead: 'Ohne Dich'. It's better. I fix my gaze on one of the inscribed square crosses set in the pillar in front of me. It becomes my audience, this Station of the Cross. I can sing, and can close down the awareness of my peripheral vision, darkening my focus. Tunnel vision, Richard calls it. Sometimes, on stage, I lose all sense of direction. I don't know where they are, except Schneider: a poet needs his metre counted out.

I'm singing on autopilot now. It takes a moment or two for me to realise that the Precentor is holding up his hand to silence me. I don't know if I should at least finish the line of lyric or not; in the end I swallow the sound and stop abruptly. I bite on the last word. It shouldn't be treated so badly, and it hisses back at me from the light of the church dome.

The Precentor speaks over the ghost-imprint of my voice: "Your baritone range is quite good. Your bass is dreadful. Not at all natural. It's too forced. To be quite honest, I'm surprised you can carry a tune at all on that level. Doesn't it hurt?"

"Sometimes." It hurts now, a dull ache of abraded tissue that longs to be soothed with a drink or a silk-smooth drag of smoke. "Yes."

"Then you shouldn't do it."

I stare at him. "The band is rather built around the fact that I sing rough bass."

The Precentor looks irritated. "Then the band is built around a lie. You are not a bass. You are a baritone. Would you play a violin like a guitar?"

"It's possible," I say.

He sniffs. "But not natural."

"So you won't teach me?"

"Oh, I can teach you. The question here is: do you want to learn?"

"I don't want to sing like a monk."

"Nevertheless, that is what you will have to do." He looks almost smug. "Get used to your voice again. Allow it to merge only with other voices, and find your own level within the harmony. Your bass and baritone are in constant wilful battle. Give them some peace. Go outside and learn to breathe properly. You won't drown here, Mr Lindemann. And for God's sake, relax your jaw or you'll never be able to resonate a single note."

He dismisses me with a flick of his hand as the bells begin to ring for Mass. I watch him go, and stand in the crossing for a moment longer. Beneath the dome of the roof, the sound is incredible. It rolls and rolls: great waves of noise lit on the deep booming F that can, sometimes, catch me and make me shiver. It is a relief to go out through the north entrance and stand on the path overlooking the valley. In the open air, under the distorting effect of the wind, the bells sound fainter, tinnier.

I go through my pockets in search of my cigarettes. I smoke one quickly, narrowing my eyes as the wind whips across the valley and throws the smoke into my face. It's cold out here. The light is like a blade, flexible and mad, too bright for me to hold up my head against it. I bow to it; throw down my cigarette half-smoked, and go back inside the church.

The solid wooden door closes behind me with a long, dull echo. I wince at the resonance. The nave is darker than the quire, so I sit behind a pillar and let the words of the Mass swim over me into incoherency. For once, I find it almost comforting.

*

Incongruously, the monastery has a shop. I buy a bar of chocolate and put it in my pocket, and then leave the confines of religion and go for a walk in the nearby wood. The path is blocked by a low iron bar with a sign that tells me to keep out; that I am about to enter private property. I ignore it and step over the barrier. The ground is covered with old leaves and rusty bracken. It smells of mulch and cold.

The hill is steeper than I expected, and the incline is sharp enough for my knees to start aching. I pause halfway up and huff. My pulse thuds in my ears like church-bells. That thought alone pushes me to continue my ascent, and soon I am out of the wood and walking along the ridge at the side of the valley.

The day is empty except for the sound of the jackdaws shouting. The fading autumn trees obscure the monastery from sight, and I am alone in the landscape. There is nothing much to see here: no pleasant view, no interesting monument. I eat the chocolate without really tasting it, and then I walk until boredom turns me back, and I descend through a different part of the wood.

This way is darker, or maybe dusk came on quicker than I thought. The trees grow dense; and then, when I stumble over a square-edged piece of masonry, I realise why this wood is private property. It is the monk's graveyard.

I always associate cemeteries with silence. Up on the hill, there was nothing, and it was alive. Here where it should be dead, there is sound: a blackbird singing his sweet evening trill, the settled coo of the woodpigeons, the slow rustling creep of something moving through the leaves. I can hear my breathing. I read aloud the names from the headstones, and feel the poetry of such simplicity. There is a rhythm in the dates, in the numbering of the days of other men's lives. It stops me from thinking about my own.

*

I return to my room and take a shower to shake off the evening chill. The bathroom has cream tiles, and the mortar between them is worn from the force of the water. I listen to the patter of hot water against my skin: tight over my collarbones, deeper over my chest, thick on my back, a rainstorm as it strikes the floor of the cubicle. I sing, knowing that I can't be heard; I sing, and I have no words: just sound, just scales and arpeggios, forcing the bass and feeling my eyebrows lift as I aim to break through mid-tenor.

I turn and face the corner of the cubicle where the wet tiles echo my voice, subterranean and heady. I remember what the Precentor said, and relax my jaw. Nobody can hear. Just the water running in strange percussive accompaniment. I sing an F, take it up to a middle C, take it higher, and aim the note at the corner of the wall.

The sound blasts back at me. It's still ragged. I fine-tune it; relax into the sound, and feel the resonance tremble through me. It drains me, squeezes the breath out of my lungs. My diaphragm feels crushed. My nose twitches and my head spins.

I drown the perfect note beneath hot water. I put my head under the shower and hang there, watching my song swim away.

*

I decide to answer the summons of the bells and attend Vespers. I arrive in time to be directed into one of the back pews of the quire, and I perch on a misericord and fumble with the different books and leaflets, searching for the one that contains the Office. It's semi-dark in the church, and I'm still warm from the shower. I feel like nodding off. It comes as a surprise when the monks appear from the crossing, entering the quire not from the aisle but past the altar. They come in like Noah's animals, two by two. Hooded and with their heads bowed, their hands hidden in their sleeves, they move silently, like dark wraiths.

They take their places, sitting in stillness until the bells cease ringing. Then, at a signal, they rise and I struggle up after them. The Abbot enters. The Hebdomad sings the first line over the faint, delicate notes of the organ, and the monks answer; and the plainchant unfolds.

I sit down again. I don't care if it's against protocol. I have to sit down. The song makes me weak.

I've heard recordings of Gregorian chant before, but the reality has a power almost indescribable. I sprawl on the misericord and try to pick it apart. The organ only plays three or four chords to support the choir. At first I think that the Hebdomad sings a line to guide the choir, but then they break the metre, and then there is no metre. There is only the most perfect sound, an incredible harmony; a creature so round and full that it envelops everything in its vicinity.

The monks in front of me are reading from a green booklet. I find it and eventually identify the Office and texts. I scan the Latin, trying to match what I can see with what I can hear, with what I can feel.

It has no complexity to it, and this renders it all the more complex. It is a contradiction: song and spoken word together, yet it is far from the performances I turn out, and at the same time it is not so different. Sacred and profane twist in my head, as sharp as pain, as the chant broadens and narrows; fills the vast, empty church with such sound, such exquisite sound.

I remember, once, that Richard said that he wished he could fuck his music. "It's all right for painters and sculptors," he grumbled. "They have living Muses."

"Writers do, too," Paul said slyly, looking at me.

Richard had smiled. "So they do."

"I don't," I said, but nobody believed me.

"Painters, sculptors, writers, poets. They have Muses, pretty girls or – ah, handsome men." Richard was far too knowing as he continued: "They can fuck their Muses. I can't. Music can't ever be embodied by one single person."

Listening to the choir around me, I wonder if music can be embodied at all. For all that it emerges from corporeality, it seems to be something divine.

*

An hour and a half later, I go to Compline. I sit in the north transept and rest my forehead on my hands as I lean on the pew in front of me. I am drunk on the sound of the chant. It goes on and on, beyond the bells, beyond me. It has no limits. I understand what Richard means. I can't bear it.

*

To attend Matins would be too keen. I lie in bed and hum the notes of an antiphon half-remembered from Vespers last night. It is still dark outside, and the darkness encourages me to sing a little louder. Nobody is listening. They're all in church. This isn't performance or judgement. I roll onto my side and feel the constriction as I breathe. I wish there was a river, a pool, anywhere I could swim. I want to know if I can sing underwater.

*

The Precentor is late. He enters the church at a quarter past eleven and apologises for the delay, but does not give reasons. I am reminded of my place here, or rather, my lack of place. For a moment I feel absurdly battered by the knowledge.

"Now," he says, pointing me to the middle of the nave, away from the rounding effect of the dome, "I trust that you looked at the book? Very well: the first antiphon. Sing it."

He doesn't wait for my response, but assumes that I will do as I am told. He sits on one of the pews and looks at me enquiringly.

I open the book and count myself in, and then start singing. I mispronounce the Latin and wince, trying to correct myself.

"Carry on," the Precentor says blandly as I falter.

I've forgotten the words to songs many times before, but there is something humiliating in having it pointed out. Especially when there is no music to save me, and an audience of one – or two. A smaller audience is less forgiving; or at least I forgive myself less in front of a smaller audience.

I slip back into the rhythm of the song. It is only five lines long, and so I sing it again when he makes no move to silence me. I am both Hebdomad and chorus, and the roles blur and become meaningless. I catch myself listening to my own voice as it rolls around the church. He's put me in the nave because it flattens the sound. It is pierced with chapels on either side; there is more awkward silence to fill.

The simplicity of the music drags me under. I lose the words. It doesn't matter. They're not mine. I drop my voice by a half-octave to hide it, and I feel the tremble of strain in the notes.

The Precentor stands up suddenly and comes towards me. "Lift your chin up. You're swallowing your sound," he orders.

I stick my chin further into my chest. The notes level off again. My lungs hurt, but it's worth it to see him confounded.

He glares at me; sighs and lifts his hands at my continuing disobedience. "Not so nasal!" he snaps. He comes closer still, and then pokes me in the belly. I flinch, but my voice doesn't change. He pokes my chest, and that makes me huff with surprised pain even though I was expecting it. My voice wavers, and I stop singing.

The Precentor looks irritated. "Stop breathing like a swimmer."

"I can't. Not so goddamn fucking quickly, I can't!"

We stare at each other. He looks disappointed, and I don't know whether it's because of my lack of belief or because I swore in church. I shut the book with a snap and hold it closed with both hands.

When he speaks again, his voice is so quiet that I have to lean forwards to hear him: "You mistrust your tenor range and you're nervous in the baritone, which is why you have a tendency to read lines rather than sing them," he says. "You only allow your voice to broaden and resonate as you dip towards the lower part of the baritone range, towards the bass… and then you forget, or at least you back away from it, and you start shouting in baritone. It is then impossible for you to build from there, and you lose your voice."

I stare at him. "Uh. Right."

"You talk a lot," the Precentor says suddenly. "In your songs."

My surprise must be comical to see, because he smiles.

"Talking is a feeble approximation of song," he continues.

"Some of my songs are poems."

He raises his eyebrows at me. "Dear, dear. You are contradictory, aren't you? Caught between baritone and bass, poem and song…"

"It's the same thing at heart," I say.

The Precentor brings his fist down hard on the pew beside us. "It is not!" he cries, and I rock back on my heels at the violence in his tone.

He flexes his hand and scowls at the pew, and then demands: "What emotion do you sing with, primarily?"

I'm not sure I can answer that. "It's… from a sense of duty," I say. "My voice is another instrument in the band. It would sound strange without it."

"It's not an instrument. Well, in general terms, then perhaps it is, but in human terms it's so much more." He sighs. "You have a soul; an instrument does not."

"I can think of some people who would disagree."

The Precentor shakes his head. "Then I would suggest that those people are merely transferring their souls onto or into the instrument they're playing. A handing-over of responsibility. A singer cannot do that. A singer must always be in control."

I blink at the implications. I think he has a valid point.

"You talk because you're detached," he continues.

"Because I have no soul," I snap back.

"Oh, you do. Somewhere in all that obfuscation."

"I talk because they're fucking poems."

He smiles, pleased that I'm riled. "And that's why you can't sing. How long have you been denying yourself that truth? Or is it that you're punishing your friends for making you sing your poems when you'd rather stay silent?"

I gape at him. Schneider said something similar to me once, a long time ago: "Why do you talk and not sing? It makes you sound so… angry."

"Am I not angry?" I'd said; and he had looked at me, just the tiniest furrow of thought making him frown, and he'd replied:

"No. No, you're not."

I had smiled. "Damn."

His frown deepened. "But you know, you're making the rest of us seem kind of superfluous. You should sing. Otherwise -" and he screwed up his face, pained to be saying such things, "otherwise, what's the point, Till?"

I had no answer for him then. I have no answer for the Precentor now. And perhaps that is too much of a response in itself.

*

He lets me go not long afterwards, and I return to the guesthouse. I stand at the window of my room and stare outside. The woodpigeons are back on the lawn. They look like battleships as they turn and turn again; not at all delicate, like the pack of fluttery, anxious starlings who land in a group, who fight and squall, and then fly off. They are unhurried, fat-fluffed against the cold. They're stupid and dumb. I close the curtains and lie flat on my back on the bed and stare at the ceiling until the bells ring for Vespers.

*

As I go into the church, the Precentor beckons me towards the quire. I am ushered into place beside two monks, and I sit, rather stunned, staring across at the pew where I sat yesterday. It seems a long way away. In between, there are three rows of monks on misericords and the wide expanse of red-and-yellow-tiled floor. I imagine that I am supposed to sing.

The Hebdomad enters and bows towards the altar, and then stands beside a small wooden lectern and waits for the arrival of the Abbot. He opens a book and moves through it rapidly, almost by rote, until he finds the right page. I lift my head slightly to try to see which text we're singing from, but I can't see clearly. I fumble through the books on the shelf in front of me. The monk on my left ignores me, bowing his head in prayer or studious avoidance. The one on the right is more helpful, and indicates the correct pages in the little green booklet. I hum the chords under my breath and earn a disapproving glare from the Hebdomad.

There is a knock, and the monks all rise to their feet. I get up with them, feeling faintly ridiculous, a woodpigeon amongst jackdaws. I clutch the green booklet and wait for the Abbot to begin the Office.

The Hebdomad steps up to the lectern. I count him in, follow the text, and am too late on the downbeat with the response. I add my voice to the choir a half-second later, playing catch-up with the next couple of notes. It's a strange sensation, but not entirely alien. I've done this before with the band: forgotten words, whole lines, and let them play until I could join in again. There's always the panic that I won't, though. There have been times when they've thought that I'd walk offstage and not come back, just over some forgotten words –

The monks turn and bow towards the altar. I turn with them. They turn back, face inwards, and bow again: once, twice. I feel exposed as an outsider. The only thing I can do is to continue singing.

I am elbowed in the ribs by the monk on my left, and I realise that I was trying to lead the Hebdomad. By pitching my voice lower, I've unsettled the choir and rushed their response as they tried to compensate for me. The Hebdomad reasserts himself, and I realise that I resent him. He has a freedom that I don't. He only needs to lead for a week, and then somebody else will take his place. To him, perhaps, this is still an honour.

For all that I write our lyrics, I don't think I've ever been the Hebdomad. I suppose that glory goes to Schneider, or to Richard, or to Paul. I wonder if they ever resent it: if they ever want to kick against the notion that an instrumental beat should lead the vocal response. I wonder if they realise how constrictive it all is: how we're piled up like square notes on the stave of Gregorian plainchant, some higher, some lower, but essentially all in the same place.

And then I wonder if it matters that I'm always the one who answers, if I'm the one who wrote the song: question and answer combined.

I relax a little and allow my voice to modulate with the choir, and there is something reassuring about blending into the background: something active about being passive, which surely makes sense only in certain disparate circumstances. This is, after all, a type of performance – and I understand that very well. But this is a performance without heat, and the resentment fades and I actually start to enjoy myself. The sound of the chant engages me: not in the way it did yesterday, but differently. I do not try to second-guess the metre. It all slips away and becomes so very simple, and the sound rings through my head, around and around, until I'm dizzy with it.

Vespers only lasts half an hour. As the monks file from the quire in silence, I notice that the Precentor is smiling. He puts his hand on my arm to draw me aside, and he says, "Well?"

I shrug. "It was interesting."

"Interesting?" His tone sharpens, and I scowl.

"I liked it."

"It had a purpose, then," he says. "You had a purpose."

"Yes."

"It is not an obligation to us. Not a duty. Even if it is set in the framework of obedience to duty. It is a responsibility, and that can never be ignored."

I shuffle my feet. "I know. But it's different -"

He holds up his hand to silence me. "No, it is not. We are the same. It is only our intent that differs, and intent can always be changed."

"As easily as breathing can be changed," I say.

"Indeed." The Precentor gives me a look, makes as if to walk away, and then turns back, an elegant rubric of hesitation that is unlike him. "By the way," he says, "the invitation to join us for dinner in the Refectory still stands. It is another hour and a half until Compline."

I smile. "Why break a habit now?"

"Why not?" he answers, just as I knew he would.

*

I go to dinner with the monks, and then I sing again at Compline. Afterwards, I sit on the windowsill and look across the darkened, empty lawn and drink warm vodka from a mug. It has been a strangely satisfying day.

*

I sleep through my alarm and wake up just before the end of Lauds. I creep into the church and hide behind a pillar in the nave to catch the last few echoes of the chant. The responses for the early morning Offices are lively rather than the reflective intonations of the evening, and one is particularly catchy. It stays in my head after the monks retreat from the quire for their breakfast and the lights go down, and I sit in the nave and hum the tune as I watch the daylight open up the dark spaces of the church.

When I feel safe enough I sing it aloud, just for the pleasure of hearing the sound reach up into the dome and echo from the chapels along the nave. The resonance lifts from my chest to my throat to the top of my head. I let go of my voice and it feels as if I'm floating. The sun shines through the stained glass of the windows, dappling blue and white and green and yellow across the floor. I'm so aware of my breathing that it's like being underwater.

The Precentor walks out of the quire and down past the bishop's chair. At the corner of the steps he turns and bows towards the altar before he continues down towards me. I stopped singing the moment I realised he was there, and now I stand up to face him in the centre of the nave.

"Well?" I say, and I don't care if he hears in my voice the demand, the arrogance, the need for reassurance. After all, I go home today. I don't need to care what he thinks of my singing.

He looks at me in silence.

"Can I sing?" I ask.

The Precentor takes a deliberately deep breath and then exhales. He says, "Yes. And no. Truthfully: if you were to train every day for the next five years or so, then perhaps something could be done with your voice. But neither of us have that luxury – because that's what it would be, wouldn't it? A luxury. Something you neither need nor want."

He smiles. "You only came here to please your friends. You already knew what you would learn here, what you would find. I have taught you nothing new, because you will not be taught."

I feel horribly guilty. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." The Precentor's expression is gentle. "We all serve in different ways. You already know your path. It is not my right to force you along another when you have not the inclination for it."

I'm not taking this in properly. Flake will be really pissed off that I wasted this opportunity, and yet I'm immensely relieved at the same time. "You're saying that my voice is shit," I say. "That I have no voice."

"We all have a voice," the Precentor says. "It's just that some of us don't want to be heard."

"Or don't need to be heard?" I wonder, and I am afraid of the answer, of the threat of being silenced.

"Oh, no," he says, looking a little shocked at the idea. "Everybody deserves the right to be heard, if that is what they want. But sometimes, there is only God to hear us, and that is enough."

I want to tell him that he's wrong, but then I remember the hundreds, thousands, of lines of poetry that I've written and that only I have seen, and really it's the same thing. I couldn't even choose my own damn poems to publish. Someone else had to do it for me, and I could hardly complain at the result. I suppose we make gods where we see fit, and then worship them or throw them down accordingly.

"I didn't need to come here," I say, slowly.

"No, you didn't. But you did. Just as you can sing, and not sing, both at the same time," the Precentor says. "Does it seem to be a contradiction? God is contradiction."

"I thought that mankind was contradiction," I say.

The Precentor gazes at me in silence for a moment, and then he laughs out loud. The sound rings up into the dome. It is the first time I've heard him laugh. "True," he says. "And you embody it so well."

"Mankind or contradiction?"

"Both." His laughter lingers in the lines around his eyes, magnified by his spectacles. "Perhaps you have learned something here, then, after all."

"I always knew I was contradictory," I say.

"But were you happy with it?"

I ponder on this. "Not really."

"Then come with me. There is one final thing I may show you before you go."

We leave the church and walk along the corridor outside. There is a heavy wooden door that opens onto the cloister proper: a quadrangle of grass set inside a colonnaded walkway on all sides.

"The cloister is supposed to symbolise the Paradise that mankind lost at the Fall," the Precentor says. "We religious spend our lives in awe of Paradise. We try to recapture a fragment of it, through obedience and devotion and responsibility."

He pauses, and looks at me. "The secular are not permitted inside the cloister," he says, "but -"

He gives me a push towards the garden.

Hesitantly, I step onto the lawn. It is soft, well-watered, as green as springtime. Around me, the blank windows of the monastery look down. Above me, the sky is broken by cloud, and the sunlight comes down in long rays. The church bells are silent. Everything is silent.

I stand in the middle of Paradise, and feel the guilty, contradictory pleasure of all humanity lift me up into harmony.

**Author's Note:**

> With gratitude to the brothers of Ampleforth Abbey.


End file.
